Read Smart: The 2019 Winner

Listen to the final episode of our podcast featuring 2019 winner Hallie Rubenhold and chair of judges Stig Abell.

In this episode our podcast host, Razia Iqbal, is joined by winner Hallie Rubenhold. Together they discuss The Five: The Untold Lives of The Women Killed by Jack the Ripper, and the significance of winning the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. You can also hear our chair of judges Stig Abell's speech from the ceremony, in which he welcomes the 'new zeitgeist' of 'expertise, quality and depth' he and the other members of the panel encountered in the judging process. That's followed by Hallie's reaction at the moment she was declared the 2019 winner.

In The Five, Hallie Rubenhold reconstructs the lives of five of the women killed by the notorious Jack the Ripper, often from as little as the DNA of a single hair. The book is a riposte to prevailing Ripper myths, giving voice to the murdered women and painting a picture of the precariousness of working class lives in Victorian London.

Read Smart Podcast is commissioned by The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction and is generously supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation.